Controlled facilities, such as a jail, prison, secure detention environments, detention facility, secured hospital, or addiction treatment facility, house large populations of individuals in confinement, which presents unique administrative challenges. In such detention environments, detained individuals, such as prisoners, offenders, convicts, military personnel, patients, government cleared personnel, or other detainees, frequently desire to communicate with individuals outside the detention environment such as friends or family members.
Detainee contact with the outside world is further desirous as such contact often can lead to improved detainee behavior and can also contribute to a lower recidivism rate, once detainees are released to the outside world.
However, controlled facility officials also have valid security concerns regarding detainee communications. The cost to address these concerns may sometimes at least partially be passed on to the detainee and the people that communicate with him.
Due to these conflicting goals (providing communication services for detainees to the outside world but certain security-related communication costs could potentially discourage communication), in addition to a lack of pre-existing, viable alternatives, there is a need for options that satisfies the needs of all the involved parties.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.